"Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers"

From 1940 to 1945, Internment Camp B at Ripples, some 35 kilometres east of Fredericton, played a considerable role in the Second World War. Chosen for its remote rural New Brunswick location, Camp B interned hundreds who were deemed by the Canadian government to be enemy sympathizers.

In the first year of its operation, the camp incarcerated German and Austrian Jewish refugees dispatched from Britain. In May 1940, fearful that the refugees were agents of the Nazis they'd fled, the British government sent thousands of men to Canada to be interned as "dangerous enemy sympathizers." After the refugees were finally released in 1941, Camp B held Canadian citizens who were suspected of opposing the war effort — including the prominent opponent of conscription and Mayor of Montreal Camillien Houde, Canadians of German and Italian descent, and homegrown fascists such as Adrien Arcand — as well as captured German and Italian merchant mariners.

In this comprehensive illustrated account of Camp B, Andrew Theobald examines the daily lives and tribulations of those imprisoned behind the barbed wire. "Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers" also scrutinizes the troubling context that led to the internment of both refugees and Canadian citizens, the debates over the ethics of internment inside and outside the camp, and the role of the camps in shaping government policy towards immigration and the post-war powers of the Canadian state.

"Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers" is volume 26 of the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Author

Andrew Theobald holds degrees in history from Mount Allison University, the University of New Brunswick, and Queen's University. He is also the author of The Bitter Harvest of War: New Brunswick and the Conscription Crisis of 1917 and numerous scholarly articles.

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